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Running trails in Kirksville, MO

Kirksville has 8 trails in the directory — 1 shaded and 2 open 24 hours. 5 of them post opening hours, so you can check the gate before an early start. They're ranked here by rating weighted by review volume, across 1,398 Google reviews. Filter by surface, loop, distance, shade or lighting to get to the run you're actually planning — no made-up difficulty score, just the facts you'd check before driving out.

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Thousand Hills State Park

4.6 ★★★★★ 1,116 reviews

Kirksville, MO

Scenic

Multiple recreation options centered around a 573-acre lake popular for boating, fishing & swimming.

Brashear Park

4.4 ★★★★☆ 241 reviews

Kirksville, MO

Shaded

Clean picnic park boasting a playground, basketball courts and clean bathrooms.

How to pick a trail in Kirksville

Match the surface to your legs. Asphalt and concrete are fast, predictable and runnable year-round but the least forgiving; crushed limestone and dirt take the sting out of high mileage; boardwalk is flat and scenic but slick in the wet. If your shins or knees are complaining, the fix that actually works is varying the surface you run on rather than chasing one "best" one.
Loop or out-and-back? A loop finishes back at the car with no backtracking; on an out-and-back you simply turn round at half your distance.
Check the hours before a 6am run. 2 trails in Kirksville are open 24 hours — the rest can sit inside a park that gates at dusk and doesn't unlock until well after sunrise. 5 of the 8 listings carry posted opening hours — worth a look before you set an alarm.
Long run? Check water and restrooms first. 2 have restrooms and 1 has a water fountain in Kirksville. Anything over an hour and those stop being nice-to-haves — and in summer, shade counts double.
The small things that decide it. 1 shaded and 1 smooth and wide enough for a stroller or a wheelchair. Busy or quiet isn't a good-or-bad thing here: a busy path is the safer choice for a solo run at dawn, a quiet one is better for intervals.

More on all of this in the trail-running guides.